There has been a need to provide deployment of rope from a rope coil in a manner in which the rope, as it becomes deployed, will not knot and will pay out in controlled, regular fashion without lumping. This need has been experienced, for example, in the air deployment of life rafts to survivors on a body of water, using a pair of deflated, inflatable life rafts, joined by a rope, and packaged in a rigid, hollow container as described in co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 703,530 filed Feb. 20, 1985. Since the aerial deployment of such life rafts is carried out purely mechanically, without human involvement, and since that system of deployment of life rafts requires the distance between the life rafts to be as great as possible when the rafts land on the body of water, a method of storing of the rope in a small, easily packaged form, and method of ensuring regular, unobstructed, unknotted pay out of the rope during aerial deployment of such a system, have been sought. During aerial deployment of the rope-joined life rafts, the coils of a normally coiled rope tend to come apart in irregular fashion resulting in knotting of the rope between the rafts and irregular pay out. These effects reduce the ultimate spacing between the life rafts as they land on the surface of the water below. Moreover, the manner of coiling of the rope is important. A rope coiled in a ball (as for example a manually coiled ball of twine) leads to knotting and irregular pay out of the rope and the imparting of twisting torque to the ball of rope as it becomes uncoiled, tending to twist the rope itself and again lead to knotting. A spirally coiled rope (as for example fishing line on a reel) again produces problems. Here there is a tendency for the entire coil of rope to spin as the rope is being uncoiled, and for series of spirals in each layer to jump off, in irregular fashion, from the side of the coil, resulting in knotting, foul-ups and irregular pay outs.
Thus, it is an object of the present invention to provide a rope coil and method of coiling rope which will produce a coiled rope structure in which the rope will normally remain securely coiled and which, when that rope is forcefully uncoiled, will provide rapid yet controlled deployment of the rope while under that force. It is a further object of the invention to provide such a coiled rope structure which will permit unwinding of the rope without creating a significant degree of rotational movement to the rope structure during uncoiling.